Video: Saturday night with Sarah

posted at 12:40 pm on September 29, 2008 by Allahpundit

Irresistible, especially the very end. So appealing is her “ordinary gal” persona that she’s bound to be a factor in 2012 whatever happens this November if she can keep from turning herself into a national punchline. Can she? The latest from Kurtz, for what it’s worth, is that “the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.” I’m where Moran is right now: I’d love to “free Sarah” or “unleash Palin” or whatever the current line is at NRO. Just tell me what it is we’re unleashing. What hidden store of knowledge is waiting to be tapped that hasn’t been yet?

As for McCain trying to clarify what she says in the clip about cross-border raids into Pakistan, it’s high time for him to knock off this dopey little game he’s playing with Obama about not telegraphing our moves. Everyone knows we’re already conducting those raids. Everyone knows we’ve sent drones over the border repeatedly to try to decapitate Al Qaeda. Persisting in this nonsense when his own running mate andGeorge Bush agree with The One only lets Obama outhawk him, which isn’t something McCain can afford, needless to say. Exit question via Tapper: If Joe Biden’s rope-line comment about clean coal was fair game, why isn’t Palin’s chat with the cheesesteak crowd?

Update: A little more on that Kurtz scoop. And also from the “for what it’s worth” file, Marc Ambinder: “Gov. Sarah Palin has lost control of her public image, several top-level McCain advisers said this weekend, and even a baseline performance in Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden may be too late to recover it.”

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Update: A little more on that Kurtz scoop. And also from the “for what it’s worth” file, Marc Ambinder: “Gov. Sarah Palin has lost control of her public image, several top-level McCain advisers said this weekend, and even a baseline performance in Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden may be too late to recover it.”

Palin doesn’t have to control her image. Unlike Obama, she’s authentic. Last time I checked she was still an incredibly popular governor of an important energy-producing state… and she didn’t say that FDR went on TV to reassure the American people after the stock market crashed.

I cannot believe they are treating her this way, just because she is adown-home American Christian girl with such a great story. If the GOP was doing this to a dem, there would such an outcry from the media to leave her alone that it would be ridiculous. The left cannot stand her because she does not cowtow to them. I think her story is great, and one we can all admire.

I’m starting to think if we lose the campaign should shoulder the blame and not the media. It’s not bad to give her talking points, but dumb talking points? Obama’s a sitting duck on economics and they’re talking about pork? Obama didn’t know Russia has a UN Sec. council vote and they’re bringing up Alaska’s proximity to Russia? Sheesh.

Gov. Sarah Palin has lost control of her public image, several top-level McCain advisers said this weekend, and even a baseline performance in Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden may be too late to recover it.

Wasn’t control of her public image kind of the McCain campaign’s responsibility at some point? It’s clear sequestering her was a major mistake.

I am not voting for John McCain because he picked Gov. Palin for his V.P. but I am voting for Sen. Obama because he was a U.S. senator 143 days before he started running for president. Okay, makes sense to me.

You are correct sir. She can easily say “Senator McCain thinks this…”. And , “You should ask Senator McCain for specifics.” Her value is to unleash on Obama like she did in her acceptance speech, slipping in the stiletto whil still being likeable.

Ugh… Yep, talk about an inept campaign. Thank you McCain for turning one of the only promising people in the Republican party into Quayle 2.0.

Agreed. Even if we lose, my silver lining was Palin/Jindal: confident conservative executives with popularity and success… but I fear McCain has made her damaged goods. Too bad; I don’t want her career to be over– I hope she can overcome this.

“it’s high time for him to knock off this dopey little game he’s playing with Obama about not telegraphing our moves. Everyone knows we’re already conducting those raids. Everyone knows we’ve sent drones over the border repeatedly to try to decapitate Al Qaeda. Persisting in this nonsense when his own running mate and George Bush agree with The One only lets Obama outhawk him, which isn’t something McCain can afford, needless to say.”

Allah, the problem really started when the NY Times reported, IMO a national security secret, that Pres. Bush had finally OK’d crossed border raids and a lot more drones into Pakistan. It was from that point after ruffling Pakistan’s sovereignty feathers that they started threatening to shoot the US down.

Worked for me on FF3. Might be load on CNN’s side, or they might have done some internal shuffling.

Love how everyone expects her to be a foreign policy guru. The gotcha question from the Obama supporter was especially rich. Something tells me that he wouldn’t know what Waziristan is if his life depended on it, the fact that it’s “blowing up” notwithstanding (he’s super cereal, guys).

That’s a lame exit question. It’s part of politics to complain about stuff like that when it happens to your side.

I’m not sure about the Pakistan stuff. I agree it probably goes nowhere, but McCain objects to the talk about Pakistan when w/r/t telegraphing that we’ll go over Zardari’s head. He has never said he wouldn’t go into Pakistan with Zardari’s ok.
We would never say out loud that we’d go into France without their permission to get Bin Laden if he was there.
Of course the US is always going to do what we want to do. But it’s a matter of diplomacy, isn’t it?

I love the cellphone guy, who is talking to his dude, after Gov Palin finishes the call. Priceless. I don’t see any contradiction in McCain’s plans on Paki and what Gov Palin said. This is almost exactly the same situation that McCain faced when Rev Wright was exposed. The media went on a witch hunt to find any preacher who came within ten feet of Sen. McCain and who made ‘controversial’ remarks, in their attempt to take the preacher issue off the table. Thankfully it did not work.

The “Quayling” of Gov. Palin is making me mad. I actually thought Dan Quayle was a pretty sharp guy. I remember around the time he misspelled Potatoe, Al Gore was walking around Monticello, looking at busts of Adams and Jefferson and other founding fathers and asking “who are these guys?”. The only reason I even know this happened was that Rush showed the video on his tv show. The rest of the MSM…nada. This is the same thing that is hapening now. Frustrating!

Wasn’t it about 6 or 8 weeks ago that understanding of the average person what a trait that was praised above all others while stones were thrown at 8+ houses?

Odd that a successful Governor with a list of accomplishments that rivals anyone in government, who also has a true claim to this type of understanding of the every day person is now personified as a rube while the inexperience community organizer with none of this Governor’s experience is presented as an intellectual genius who’s community is not in worse shape from his actions.

Biden has been one non-stop, contradicting, gaffe-machine since the convention… and he skates.
But we can’t expect this to be a fair fight. Palin will only become a punchline if conservatives allow her to be. They attempted the VERY SAME THING with Reagan. And no, I’m not saying she is Reagan, but she’s closer to him than…say a certain airhead running mate with expensive hairdos from last cycle named Edwards.

I don’t think “unleashing her” has much to do with her having some reservoir of hidden knowledge. I think she’s getting stupid talking points and it’s F’ing things up. What we want is for her to just be herself and stop thinking and trying to remember every damn answer they have been force feeding her. All you have to do is see past interviews to realize that she’s smart and when she’s relaxed and just answering questions instead of over thinking everything she does really well. That she appears real and honest. I would argue that making mistakes isn’t even really the problem with her past two interviews. It’s that she’s coming off totally clueless on some answers and appears unprepared and evasive. I mean some of these questions aren’t even that tough though some of them are obviously “gotcha” type questions. It’s the way she’s answering them. On Foreign Policy it would have been easier to point out that many governors don’t have any foreign policy experience in the first place; that she’s is not the top of the ticket but that by the time she gets in there she will be well verse. Instead she hammed and hawed about Russia and Canada being close by. It might be true but they had to know what would have happened in the media. It is clear that she hasn’t learned the stupid Washington talking points on this.

As for McCain trying to clarify what she says in the clip about cross-border raids into Pakistan, it’s high time for him to knock off this dopey little game he’s playing with Obama about not telegraphing our moves.

Yes, McCain blew the question from Stephanopoulos but It’s time for you to wake up as well, Allah. Palin was talking about hot pursuit, not invading Pakistan which is Obama’s pretend position.

One thing we can count on is that Joe Biden will not follow any of the advice of his handlers going into the debate. Once he gets on stage he is going to try to smart-a** his way to victory. Sarah needs to put some lipstick on that pig right from the start and then stand back and let Joe do his thing.

Ugh… Yep, talk about an inept campaign. Thank you McCain for turning one of the only promising people in the Republican party into Quayle 2.0.

Illinidiva on September 29, 2008 at 12:50 PM

Why do we always blame ourselves. The media would have found anything to beat this ticket up over. Even if she were sharp as a tack and aced every interview of the freaking “three” that she’s done, they’d either call her too cold or calculating or they’d just hammer her personal life more. It doesn’t matter. This woman put it all on the line to do this for us. She’s had to put her entire family up against the outragous filth being said about them by the MSM. And she’s jeopardized her position as Governor of Alaska with a greater than 80 percent approval rating to take on the task of running as out VP. The “problem” is us buying into the medias premise of her performance. SNAP THE HELL OUT OF IT! I’ve gone to liberal blogs and they are crowing about how disorganized and defeated we sound. Forget about McCain falling down on the job, look in the damn mirror.

I wish bloggers would stop posting pictures of her in bathing suits, columnists would stop alluding to making out with her in the back seats of their cars, and posters would stop talking about how hot she is, only to turn around and criticize her for not being qualified to be president when she is running for vice president.

At this stage of the game I put more stake in what Erin Brockovich and Ann Althouse say about Gov. Palin than I do in some unnamed McCain advisers and hormonal guys.

BTW, for all of those Palin detractors who claim Romney would have been better, he endorsed the bailout today.

Well, they could not very well open Gov. Palin up to regular press avails when they aren’t doing any with McCain himself anymore.

This is the downside of Steve Schmidt. He runs a very tight ship, but he also believes in strictly limiting the candidates’ access to the press. He shut down the Straight Talk Express immediately when he took over. While this had the salutary effect of limiting the ability of the media or Obama to invent new attacks like the “100 years in Iraq” thing, it has also pissed off the media who were used to chit-chat with McCain every day. And it has prevented Gov. Palin from charming the press or being able to personally respond to the attacks and smears. This is disastrous when you have a new and unknown face bursting on the scene 65 days before the election.

Wow, unlike their VP, Palin didn’t throw out lie after lie, gaffe after gaffe, make racial slurs, etc. She just hung out with the people. I feel a little bad for Willow, though, just having to stand there while mobs swarm her mom.

Free Sarah, to me, means just letting her answer or flub on her own without making her sound like a Bush Mini Me. The style that has been forced upon her is unmistakable. Let her sink or swim on her own. It couldn’t be worse, at this point.

Wasn’t control of her public image kind of the McCain campaign’s responsibility at some point? It’s clear sequestering her was a major mistake.

Slublog on September 29, 2008 at 12:47 PM

Slu- I agree. I think the press really spooked them when they came out so rabidly anti-Palin. The press was also trying to use the Palin choice against McCain (this choice shows how unstable he is!), so it was a double whammy.
The McCain people responded by hiding Palin away.

I don’t know the answer, but I’ve come to terms with the knowledge that the press is not going to let McCain win. And they aren’t going to let Obama win. They even destroyed Hillary for him.

Why do we always blame ourselves. The media would have found anything to beat this ticket up over. Even if she were sharp as a tack and aced every interview of the freaking “three” that she’s done, they’d either call her too cold or calculating or they’d just hammer her personal life more. It doesn’t matter. This woman put it all on the line to do this for us. She’s had to put her entire family up against the outragous filth being said about them by the MSM. And she’s jeopardized her position as Governor of Alaska with a greater than 80 percent approval rating to take on the task of running as out VP. The “problem” is us buying into the medias premise of her performance. SNAP THE HELL OUT OF IT! I’ve gone to liberal blogs and they are crowing about how disorganized and defeated we sound. Forget about McCain falling down on the job, look in the damn mirror.

hawkdriver on September 29, 2008 at 1:12 PM

A. Her performance really hasn’t been that sharp since her speech and has fed into the media’s perception of her as a lightweight.

B. It would have probably been better for her to wait until 2012 than to run for VP. She would have been able to come up with her own policy proposals/ coherent philosophies to go along with her very winning personality.

C. The media has always been against Republicans in general. They tried to paint Reagan as a lightweight for goodness. However, Reagan was able to expertly play the hand he was dealt. McCain’s team has not been doing a good job doing this with Palin.

I was convinced that at least 75% of the people here wanted her on the ticket because she is “hot.” Nobody wanted to stop and consider the downside of putting someone so green and unknown into the white-hot lights of a presidential campaign, especially after her appearance seemed to jump-start the McCain campaign. She became an immediate threat to the coronation of Obama, and the media frenzy that followed was totally predictable. She could have been another Margaret Thatcher in these interviews and it would not have mattered.

As for McCain trying to clarify what she says in the clip about cross-border raids into Pakistan, it’s high time for him to knock off this dopey little game he’s playing with Obama about not telegraphing our moves.

I think McCain is right in respect to the fact that you just don’t SAY things like that, lest you embarrass Pakistan into having to ratchet up their response. Comments like Obama’s have a higher profile that the actual attacks we’re conducting do. I don’t think it’s about telegraphing our moves as much as it is about conducting realpolitik.

I agree with you both. The msm is almost completely controlled by the democrats and then we have our own elitist and passive-aggressives working against her, too. So, I’m not sure how much control the campaign ever had.

Palin should do the decent thing and withdraw from the race for family reasons or something like that. McCain really looks bad for picking her in the first place. The country faces a world which demands someone more articulate than she is about policy and a vision for the US in the world. She can’t cut it and it hurts McCain but there is still time to correct this.

I remember around the time he misspelled Potatoe, Al Gore was walking around Monticello, looking at busts of Adams and Jefferson and other founding fathers and asking “who are these guys?”

HawaiiLwyr on September 29, 2008 at 1:05 PM

We have to be right 100% of the time, no mistakes; they just have to be consistent in their leftist rhetoric. Pretty simple.

The MSM is taking after Palin on her weaknesses, which is exactly what you have to do to win an election. The point behind all of this is to win the election for Obama, and the alphabet news services are providing free opo research and attack ads, freeing the Obama camp to focus on the sleazier “big lies.”

It will work, too, if Palin doesn’t start hitting dingers and fast. At this point, she might be too damaged to recover.

Aside from a single interview with Sean Hannity, she hasn’t appeared on a single talk radio show, hasn’t held a single conference call with conservative activists, nor she has participated in a telephone call with conservative bloggers.

She was supposed to be the bridge to the base, but up till now she’s really only been McCain’s date to the election ball. McCain is yet again playing fast and loose with the base, ignoring the reality that we put his candidacy a distant second to core conservative principles. We don’t want a clone of him on his arm. We want someone that is different from him, the more different the better.

“BTW, for all of those Palin detractors who claim Romney would have been better, he endorsed the bailout today.

Y-not on September 29, 2008 at 1:12 PM”

Of course Romney endorsed the bailout today…he isnt stupid.

I am sure Sarah Palin is a very nice person. Its terrible what they did to her. She wasnt qualified to be veep but they made a identity politics choice and it has blown up in their faces. I knew the Palin thing was a short term positive but would ultimately be a further drag on the already bad ticket since she wasnt qualified.

McCain is toast. Its a bummer but that what the republicans get for nominating such a lousy candidate.

Every poll indicated that the vast majority of Iraqis did not want their country divided up, yet your proposal to end the violence was to partition the country. You would have turned sporadic sectarian violence into a full scale civil war. And you’re the foreign-policy expert on the Obama team.

McCain really looks bad for picking her in the first place. The country faces a world which demands someone more articulate than she is about policy and a vision for the US in the world. She can’t cut it and it hurts McCain but there is still time to correct this.

lexhamfox on September 29, 2008 at 1:19 PM

Please support this statement with something other than polls or punditry. What has the Governor of Alaska done that demonstrates she is not articulate enough about policy to be vice president under McCain?

“Gov. Sarah Palin has lost control of her public image, several top-level McCain advisers said this weekend, and even a baseline performance in Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden may be too late to recover it.”

It now dawns on me, that was the point all along. My cousin was asking me about Palin and from him I, get the sense that the media has been getting their message across. The media is not attacking Palin so much as they are protecing Hillary in 2012. A popular capable Palin can carry the middle class white male Democrat away from Hillary and they know it. That I think is what they are protecting their prototypical image of the female politician which does not include pro-life, pro-gun ideology. So the ‘Cuda must be stopped and she must be stopped NOW!

I just heard on Dennis Prager a sound bite of Sen. Joe Biden in the same ‘on the streets’ circumstances where the Senator got questioned by someone off the streets. Senator Biden stated that he was the first person in Congress some 20 odd years ago to introduce bills dealing with Global Warming and that he opposes ANY coal factories in the United States and if WE LET CHINA build coal factories we MUST have them ‘clean burning’ factories because they’re killing our lungs.

You hear Palin’s little soundbite hear but you never hear the other side. You people are ridiculous by minutely picking her a part and doing exactly what the MSM wants. The more you hone in on it the more they’ll give you. Why not start creating some nice sock puppetty YouTube videos of Joe Biden and Obama gaffs and spread them all over the place rather than wasting you and my time on this BS.

You focus on this and you get what you asking for out of it. I fail to see how these things about her are more news and noteworthy than any of the others. Pathetic.

Allah,
no words I can say to you at this point that will not get me banned. surfice it to say I will aviod your posts if able and look for ED’s
unseen on September 29, 2008 at 1:20 PM

Please, don’t. No reason why he shouldn’t be held accountable for the patronizing and denigrating way he has treated Gov. Palin. I predict the day after the election, no matter what the results, there are going to be a lot of people banned from HotAir.

Persisting in this nonsense when his own running mate and George Bush agree with The One only lets Obama outhawk him, which isn’t something McCain can afford,

I think we should step back and review what Obama said, which if I remember, was that if he had actionable intelligence on the location of OBL AND the Pakistanis wouldn’t act on it, that he would send in our military to get him. And yes that is in line with the Bush strategy but not the limit of it.

That got spun into Obama would invade Pakistan, which I thought was a silly spin when it was done because his actual strategy was limited as he stated it.

So the fact that we are conducting cross border engagements, which I’m sure we have been doing for some time under Musharraf anyway, doesn’t really mean that McCain and Obama agree on the Bush strategy. McCain agrees with Bush, but it is the spin of what Obama said that is in line with Bush, not what he actually meant.

She can’t cut it and it hurts McCain but there is still time to correct this.

lexhamfox on September 29, 2008 at 1:19 PM

BS. Nice troll, though. Palin got to where she was on her own two feet. She can handle a national campaign. I said at the very beginning of all this that the greatest potential problem was her doing the “stand by your man” routine too long.

Persisting in this nonsense when his own running mate and George Bush agree with The One only lets Obama outhawk him, which isn’t something McCain can afford,
I think we should step back and review what Obama said, which if I remember, was that if he had actionable intelligence on the location of OBL AND the Pakistanis wouldn’t act on it, that he would send in our military to get him. And yes that is in line with the Bush strategy but not the limit of it.

That got spun into Obama would invade Pakistan, which I thought was a silly spin when it was done because his actual strategy was limited as he stated it.

So the fact that we are conducting cross border engagements, which I’m sure we have been doing for some time under Musharraf anyway, doesn’t really mean that McCain and Obama agree on the Bush strategy. McCain agrees with Bush, but it is the spin of what Obama said that is in line with Bush, not what he actually meant.

I wonder if it would have been helpful at all for her, in the beginning, to say something like:

“It’s true that as a governor, your focus is not on foreign policy and you do not have many opportunities to interface with international leaders. That’s because the purpose of a governor is to be directly responsible for implementing the will of the people in her state.” Then add in some talking points about what she’s done that benefits Alaska. Then transition to specific policies that McCain/Palin have planned and how they would benefit America.

Then, perhaps close with something along the lines of:

“As I recall, there was a recent candidate for president that came from a state that gets dismissed as being less-than-important. A man that had no foreign policy experience to speak of when he was elected. That man later went on to…blah blah Camp David blah blah” [stroke the ego of the Clinton's on Bill's supposed foreign policy achievements since the Dem's have spent years talking him up]. Then, add in something witty about how he had no experience and did well at the top and she’s only running for VP, so, with a McCain/Palin administration you get the combo of foreign policy experience and executive experience.

It seems that something along those lines would have made her lack of foreign policy experience a non-issue. I’m sure the media would still have tried to make it an issue….but, maybe it would have gained less traction.

I think McCain is right in respect to the fact that you just don’t SAY things like that, lest you embarrass Pakistan into having to ratchet up their response. Comments like Obama’s have a higher profile that the actual attacks we’re conducting do. I don’t think it’s about telegraphing our moves as much as it is about conducting realpolitik.

Pablo on September 29, 2008 at 1:18 PM

Exactly, Pablo.

ps. Obama thinks this realpolitik is important, too, but only says it about countries like Iran.

A. Her performance really hasn’t been that sharp since her speech and has fed into the media’s perception of her as a lightweight.

B. It would have probably been better for her to wait until 2012 than to run for VP. She would have been able to come up with her own policy proposals/ coherent philosophies to go along with her very winning personality.

C. The media has always been against Republicans in general. They tried to paint Reagan as a lightweight for goodness. However, Reagan was able to expertly play the hand he was dealt. McCain’s team has not been doing a good job doing this with Palin.

Illinidiva on September 29, 2008 at 1:17 PM

That’s the point my friend. Look at the level of power the media has weighed against us in this election. After an Obama Presidency with both the Senate and House and 8 years to to appoint judges, what do you perceive improves by then. By then a government and liberal controlled media will convince the majority of America that not only did GWB take us to a war that almost ruined this country (thier words) but also that conservatives caused the economic crisis. They’re trying to do it already. You want the Fairness Doctraine? You want a trillion to go to the UN welfare fund over the next ten years? You want liberals in charge of your military in the global war against terror? You wnat to wait for 2012? Too late then. Too late in 2010. That’s the year the battle cry will be, “Let’s get rid of the last remaining conservative bastards that caused all this.” Reagan didn’t just win the media over. We were drawn to him. Seems to me , we got excited about the good governor and then ran like a bunch of school kids first time we saw the bully.

Please support this statement with something other than polls or punditry. What has the Governor of Alaska done that demonstrates she is not articulate enough about policy to be vice president under McCain?

Y-not on September 29, 2008 at 1:23 PM

How about this during a major interview (her own words):

When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

“It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where–where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to–to our state.”

I think this wandering nonsense from someone who will be especially close to the Presidency will suffice. Let me know if you need more.

BTW, for all of those Palin detractors who claim Romney would have been better, he endorsed the bailout today.

Y-not on September 29, 2008 at 1:12 PM

Interesting. Are you a non-lipstick-ish person who doesn’t like the fact that she doesn’t CARE for media.

After all the crap thrown, pushed, pulled and flung at her… do you blame her for NOT wanting to be on anything concerning Media? Hell I wouknd’t want to get near them either.

This little snap shot of her having a bite to eat and the fact that she is talking to people one on one shows she CAN actually do it and isn’t afraid to talk to them nor does she care if they call her “Hon”.

Please… if you are going to be as assinine as most of the other “critic’s” in here… at least TRY to give a real reason other then the isn’t articulate enough. Especially since they cut her off on so many damn parts of her interview.

Screw it… vote Obamessiah.. at least we know the U.S. will be screwed then!

“Please support this statement with something other than polls or punditry. What has the Governor of Alaska done that demonstrates she is not articulate enough about policy to be vice president under McCain?

Y-not on September 29, 2008 at 1:23 PM”

She said that evidence of her foreign policy experience is that Alaska borders Russia and Canada. And then she said that when Putin is doing fly overs and such that it is Alask that is there keeping an eye on him. Pure stupidity. I guess you will be the last person defending her and pretending she is qualified.

She is probably a good person and has maybe done a good job in Alaska but she wasnt ready. Fault McCain. He sucks.

We don’t need the S.O.S. that is in D.C. now and the current President would hardly quailfy for a high school debate team. We are letting the liberal media rule our thoughts. As usual.

Cindy Munford on September 29, 2008 at 1:28 PM

The MSM does still hold sway with Joe Sixpack in Middle America. Since they’re biased against conservatives, Republican politicos better be able to talk over them to the John Q Public. Reagan could do this and Gingrich was able to do this to some extent in 1994. Palin probably could have but has been mishandled by the McCain campaign and would have probably been more effective in 2012 than this year.

Think about it. Palin has rapidly climbed the political ladder by running her own ship. She really is a maverick and has been able to call her own shots. Now she has to play second fiddle to Mac which essentially prevents her from doing/saying the things that made her successful in the first place.

Employers practice this insanity all the time. They recognize an individual’s unique talents and hire them into the company, then inexplicably try to change them to fit the company mold.